


Anyone Would Drown (To Such a Sweet Siren Song)

by Fweeble



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, dark themes, vaguely sociopathic/psychopathic Tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tim was plucked off the streets of Blüdhaven after his failed attempt to convince Dick that Batman needs a Robin by Ra’s al Ghul, Jason is jarred into reality by near-drowning in a Lazarus Pit, and a boy whose smile is as dark as his hair is there when he wakes.</p><p> </p><p>Alternatively: In which Jason realizes that he has never stopped drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anyone Would Drown (To Such a Sweet Siren Song)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartslogos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/gifts).



> Belated Valentine's Day pressie for my baby Hearts. Vaguely based off the song "Liar, Liar" by A Fine Frenzy.

Jason remembers the sensation of burning, the feeling of drowning in something sickly sweet and his body betraying him; of liquid scorching its way down his throat. Fingers dug into his flesh, and there had been a flicker of realization, then, of recognition.   
  
 _Alive._  
  
The second thing he remembers is the flash of white, a grin more teeth than anything. “You’re conscious, then,” he had heard as he felt the fingers release him. He had slumped forward without the support, felt the squish of wet clothes against his skin, against porous stone. “There are towels off to the left of you when you’re done being a dead fish on shore.”  
  
He doesn’t remember his first meeting with Timothy beyond the impression of gleaming white teeth and a voice, dark and smooth like fine molasses spiked with aconite. Everything had burned. He had simply turned over and wondered why he didn’t feel the need to expel what he had swallowed like a metaphorical geyser. Sleep came easily.   
  
He had spent a week and a half burning with fever dreams of death. He had woken to Talia al Ghul sitting across from his bed. “Do you plan on returning to the arms of Death after all the trouble I went through?”  
  
His throat had burned, everything ached, and he had chosen not to say anything. Sleep was an easy escape.  
  
—  
  
Jason has, since his drowning (his revival, the gift of his sanity and consciousness, a certain laughing boy had corrected) met Timothy a handful of times in his weeks in one of Ra’s’ many underground compounds. He is a caged pet; he is given food, shelter, clothes, but no freedom. He roams where he can, waiting, searching.  Whenever he sees the other boy it is because Timothy seeks him out; Jason has no choice in the matter.  
  
Timothy is pale where he isn’t dark. Dark coal hair and glittering cobalt eyes in sharp contrast to skin so white Jason thinks he can see veins under proper lighting. Timothy would look angelic, Jason thinks, like a Botticelli painting, if it weren’t for his small smile, full of dark promises and wondrous excitement. A devil hides, wrapped up in the lovely packaging of that smile.  
  
“You should leave soon, you know.” Timothy often reminds him, all sharp teeth and sparkling eyes. “It won’t be long now until your precious guardian kills someone.”  
  
And he would; if he could, Jason would’ve flown out of Ra’s’ clutches without a thought and returned home, back to Gotham. Back to Bruce and Alfred and Dick and Babs and The Mission. He’d apologize, for recklessly running away, for running to Ethiopia and death. For leaving Bruce behind.  
  
“Then let me go.”  
  
Timothy always laughs at this point.  
  
“You’re alive because Ra’s’ dear daughter is smitten with the Detective. Funny thing, sentiment.”  
  
When Timothy isn’t whispering poisonous words into his ears, the boy is off doing things darker than his words. He is thin, but Jason remembers the steely strength of the fingers that had hauled him out of the Pit. Everything about the boy is hidden under painted layers of deception and truth; Jason can’t help but be reminded of the Lewis Carroll’s infamous Cheshire Cat.  
  
—  
  
Every failed escape ends with the crack of bone and a low, amused voice tutting darkly into his ear.  
  
“Nuh uh, little birdie. You’re not allowed to fly away just yet.”  
  
—  
  
One day, Timothy strolls into his room sticky with blood. He sits on Jason’s table with a sickening squelch of wet blood and sodden clothes and swings his feet and hums.  
  
“Do you miss Gotham, Jason? The grey skies and dirty roads and filthier criminals? Do you miss the sensation of flying, of falling?”  
  
It has been many months since he had been fished out of green liquid, out of the cloying, toxically sweet depths of insanity, and for the first time, a chill falls over him and Jason feels his gut clench in fear. Timothy is dangerous; he had always known that, but he had acknowledged it with the nonchalance of an outside observer.   
  
But he isn’t; he’s not a scientist standing on the other side of Plexiglas, safe and removed. He is the rabbit locked in with the snake as the snake considers whether or not he is prey it is capable of swallowing whole.  
  
“I miss it sometimes,” Timothy continues, balancing a gleaming knife on its point, “I miss the sounds of clanking fire escapes, the smell of cheap cigarettes and piss.” Dark, dark eyes hold his gaze as their owner leans forward as if to whisper, “There are plenty of back alleys with dead carcasses and pests but there’s nothing quite like home, is there?”  
  
“Gotham is more than just back alleys.”  
  
Jason wonders when it was that Gotham became more than that, when daily life became more than just struggling through the day and became about  _living_.  He thinks, maybe, it was when he decided to steal  _those_  gleaming titanium alloy rims instead of other, less risky, rims.   
  
“Oh, I know. There are also bats.”  
  
When Timothy leaves, Jason is left with a sticky smear of blood on his desk and the tendrils of anxiety clench.  
  
—  
  
The next time Timothy visits, he is whistling and twirling a ring of heavy, rustic keys around his finger.   
  
“He’s about to fall,” he says. “Ra’s isn’t too happy about that. No one will be responsible for his downfall but Ra’s, you see, so off you go to play morality pet to the big Brooding Bat.”  
  
“What happened.”  
  
Timothy smiles. Jason decides he’d look better with some of his teeth missing. Timothy dances away, laughing gaily.  
  
“ _What happened.”_  
  
“A coma patient passed away a few hours ago. Even the dear commissioner is wondering if it’s time to stop Gotham’s beloved crusader.”  
  
Jason has no memory of what happens, just that hours later he wakes with the taste of copper in his mouth, a concussion, three bruised ribs and what seems to be swelling in his left eye.  
  
“Never attack me again,” Timothy says, nudging Jason’s bruised ribs with the point of his boot and wearing a petulant pout. “Now we’re a few hours behind schedule. I’ve got better things to do than babysit an unconscious idiot, you know.”  
  
“Like playing with hearts,” Jason croaks, “Bet you carve them out yourself.”  
  
“Of course not,” Timothy says with a moue of disdain, “I prefer lungs.” He jingles the keys meaningfully. “Up you go, Todd. It’s time for good little birdies to fly home.”  
  
Timothy never uses the keys.  
  
They are in a hangar when Jason feels the prick of a needle.  
  
“Just doze a bit, Todd.” Timothy sings, “Important things to be done, wouldn’t want to bore you.”  
  
The last thing Jason sees is the image of Talia as darkness eats away at his vision.  
  
“Take care of him,” she says.  
  
—  
  
Jason wakes to crisp white sheets, the familiar scent of lavender, and Bruce looking fragile and breakable in a chair by the bed.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, hands in his lap, knuckles bone-white.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jason mutters in reply, “I’m so fucking  _sorry_.”  
  
Bruce looks at him as if afraid he’ll shatter.   
  
—  
  
The media has a field day: Jason Todd-Wayne, adopted son of billionaire Bruce Wayne has been found, alive. There are rumors that the corpse in the grave is the body of a murdered runaway. There is speculation that there was a ransom, and, after many years, Jason was finally returned. The real Jason Todd is buried, others say, this is an imposter hungry for money.  
  
 _How_ , Jason wants to ask,  _How are you sure I am who I say I am?_  
  
The fifth day since his return, they are eating breakfast and Jason is spreading jam on his toast when Bruce says, “Everything came back negative.”  
  
What came back negative? Was he negative for tampering or was he negative for some kind of obscure, cryptic clone gene that is known only to the Batman?   
  
Or maybe Talia had left a message.  
  
 _“You’re alive because Ra’s’ dear daughter is smitten with the Detective. Funny thing, sentiment.”  
  
“Take care of him.”_  
  
That night, despite the protests of his taped ribs, he begins training with Bruce again. He has lost muscle and dexterity while gaining half a foot in height. He wonders how many months he spent wandering around, mindless and lost. Had it really only been months in that underground compound or had it been more than that, had it been years?  
  
Years have passed and he spent some of them dead and some of them half-dead. Jason doesn’t know how old he should say he is.  
  
—  
  
The fighting becomes a fabric of life.   
  
Bruce is protective, belligerent, overbearing. He doesn’t trust Jason, can’t bear to have him out of sight, can’t allow him to stray too far. He hovers like Jason is a porcelain vase in the midst of an earthquake and he, Bruce, is the only thing that can keep it from toppling over and shattering. Jason has had enough of the guilt, had felt it eat him alive when Timothy had spoken of the dead coma patient as if discussing the weather.   
  
Jason looks at the Robin suit and is suddenly overcome with a torrent of emotions and decides he understands why Dick didn’t simply leave but became Nightwing. The blinding colors don’t suit him anymore. He had died and come back but he thinks Robin didn’t make it.   
  
It is a dismally rainy day when Jason returns home to find packed bags sitting on his bed.  
  
“You’ll learn from my masters,” Bruce says from the doorway. “You’ll pass their tests and come back and —”  
  
“And you’ll stop being an overbearing asshole,” Jason snipes.  
  
Bruce swallows thickly. “Yes.”  
  
 _You’re sending me away_ , Jason thinks,  _is it because it hurts more to look at me alive than it does to suffer with me dead?_  
  
—

Hong Kong is loud, filled with bright lights and warm bodies. It is a place where a person can disappear, like muddy puddles under a desert sun. Sometimes, Jason thinks he’d like to stay there because the other option is returning to Gotham. He wonders why the home he spent months yearning for is now the one place he’d give anything to run away from.   
  
Four days ago, he completed his training with Shiva. He no longer has any reason to stay.   
  
Timothy finds him wandering in an outdoor market, speaking to a ruddy-faced lady in her fifties in broken Cantonese as she tries to hawk her wares.   
  
“Little bird, shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”  
  
Jason growls. Nothing about him is little and, now that Bruce has sent him away, he certainly isn’t a bird anymore. “Shouldn’t you be playing jailor to Ra’s’ captors in secret underground bunkers?”  
  
“How droll,” Timothy drawls with disinterest. “Do you know what this is?” He flashes cold steel and the fish monger decides she won’t be having blood and guts before her stall and ushers Jason away with angry words and forceful shoves of her tiny gnarled hands.   
  
“Goddammit,” Jason hisses as he follows Timothy away from the market. He considers punching Timothy; he probably can make contact now that he’s back on a regular training regimen. A little voice tells him there would be nothing more satisfying in the world than seeing Timothy’s pretty face marred with a dark bruise.  
  
“Do you know what it is?”  Timothy repeats. Jason can hear Tim’s unsaid ‘idiot’ and bristles.  
  
“A knife. I’m not an idiot.”  
  
“Clearly,” Timothy says before whipping around and pushing Jason up against the back of a building. Timothy had lead them to a back alley, Jason realizes, and he is an idiot for not noticing. The knife bites into the side of his neck and, distractedly, Jason wonders how someone so small can hold him pinned against the side of a dingy apartment building in the heart of Hong Kong.   
  
“This is a tool,” Timothy explains lightly. “There are tools that are useful and there are tools that are not. A sharp blade is infinitely more useful than a dull one, you see.”  
  
“And I suppose you’re a sharp blade.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sharp to be sure, but I am more useful than a mere knife, I assure you.”  
  
Jason can’t contain his snort of amusement. “A glorified pen knife.”  
  
“If all the little ninjas that flit about doing Ra’s’ bidding are pen knives then I am a Swiss army knife.”  
  
“Still a puny knife.”  
  
Timothy pulls away with a short laugh. “So much more than a ‘puny knife,’ Todd. So much more.”  
  
He cleans his blade on the lapels of Jason’s leather coat and leaves with a little wave.  
  
Jason licks his lips as he watches the boy leave and wills his heart to still.  
  
That night, Jason hears on the news of a political scandal. The distressed woman clutching the Chief Executive’s tuxedo in the picture, upon closer inspection, has a face that looks a bit like Timothy. The long, muscled legs are definitely Timothy’s.   
  
In bed, he stares at the ceiling of his dingy apartment and thinks of the events of the day, of the days in Ra’s’ underground compound, and has an epiphany.  
  
  
  
He returns to Gotham two days later and feels his heart twist when he sees Bruce’s small smile of relief. He chooses not to talk about Timothy and the dark alleys of Hong Kong and how he wished, with every bit of him, to never leave Hong Kong until cobalt eyes had bored into his.  
  
Timothy, he had realized, was from Gotham too.  
  
—  
  
 _“There are plenty of back alleys with dead carcasses and pests but there’s nothing quite like home, is there?”_  
  
Timothy had said that and, at the time, Jason had assumed he had meant him,  _Jason_.   
  
He spends days in the Bat Cave, scrolling through the computer’s database. He finds a missing person’s case. A boy, age 13, a native Gothamite, had disappeared one night in Blüdhaven. He recognizes the street, the last street the boy was seen standing on. There are pages worth of notes, of speculation, and Jason knows that Bruce had spent weeks, maybe months, researching this case. The picture of the little boy with large eyes is familiar and suddenly Jason feels ill. All he can think of is  _Dick_.  
  
  
  
“He came to me,” Dick says over the phone, “Tim came to me one day and said, ‘You have to go back. Batman needs you.’ He said, one day, Bruce was going to end up killing someone.”  
  
Jason can hear the guilt, the self-loathing.   
  
“He  _knew_ , Jason. Oh god, he  _knew_. He knew who I was, who Bruce was, who  _you_  were. He knew and I turned him away and he _disappeared_.” Dick’s laugh is harsh and broken and he was never, ever meant to sound like that. “I guess the kid was right, too. It took a few years but look, Batman’s a murderer.”  
  
“He’s not. Bruce isn’t –It was a  _mistake_.”  
  
“A man died, Jason. Many more were hospitalized, for months. Bruce lost it when you died and I just let it happen.”  
  
“It’s not your job to babysit him.”  
  
“That’s not it,” Dick sighs.  
  
“I think I know what happened to the boy,” Jason says, uncomfortable with the path the conversation was heading down. “Ra’s. Ra’s took him.”  
  
“He would’ve been better off dead then,” Dick whispers and hangs up the phone.  
  
—  
  
Jason doesn’t tell Bruce about Timothy, the boy who used to be Tim Drake but has instead become Timothy, a self-claimed tool of Ra’s al Ghul. He doesn’t mention the little boy with dark, intelligent eyes who had, somehow, known everything and, because of his brilliance, attracted the attention of a man, a villain who even Bruce respected.  
  
If no one ever talks about it, it will be something brushed underneath a rug and forgotten. His relationship with Bruce is so delicate; it is teetering precariously on an edge. It can just as easily fall to pieces as it can strengthen and stabilize. He tells himself that Bruce doesn’t need to know, that he doesn’t need Bruce to save that little boy in that black and white photograph.   
  
He dreams at night. He dreams of dark, endlessly blue eyes and a smile that is bright and laughter like sunshine after a rainy day. He dreams of a Timothy that is everything but who he is now.   
  
  
  
In May, on a strangely bright and cloudless day, Timothy sits down at Jason’s customary table in the corner of a tiny coffee shop with a blueberry muffin and tea.   
  
“So you’ve figured everything out,” Timothy says as he daintily nibbles at the muffin. “Your attempts at hacking are sloppy and not at all like Miss Gordon’s fine touch, or the Detective’s, for that matter. You could do with some tutelage, I think.”  
  
“You could leave. I’ll help. You can reunite with your dad,” Jason hesitates a bit. “You can be normal again.”

“Normal is dull,” Timothy dismisses. “More often than not, my parents were off gallivanting around the world, having fun. If anything, I think was problematic. They needed a full-time cook while I was around when they could have just had a maid who cleaned the house once or twice a week while they were away. They must have found my absence from their lives freeing. I’m sure my father still does.”  
  
“Your parents loved you and I’m sure your dad still does.”  
  
“My parents stopped all searches for me six and a half months after I had disappeared. My father began dating again two months, one week, and four days after my mother died. He remarried after seven months. I believe they are expecting their first child in a few months. I don’t think either of them have had me on their mind for quite awhile.” Timothy sips his tea thoughtfully. “Don’t misunderstand, I don’t begrudge them for it.”  
  
“You don’t.”  
  
“Not at all. I can’t imagine a life other than this, Todd. I am as close to content as a person of my nature can be.” The smile appears again, all teeth and not at all kind. “I think I’d die of boredom in any other life.”  
  
“What you’re experiencing –that’s Stockholm Syndrome, Timothy.” Jason tries to reason. He fingers the syringe he’s kept on him since the night he had called Dick. All he needs is the right opportunity and he can quietly whisk Timothy back to the manor and then –and then they will figure things out. Put things right. And maybe, then, they will all be able to sleep without Tim Drake haunting them.  
  
Timothy quirks an eyebrow and gets out of his chair. He sidles up behind Jason and whispers into the shell of Jason’s ear, “Don’t be silly, Jason. I don’t stay in this world because of  _Ra’s_. I stay because I want to.”  
  
“And what does Ra’s want with you? A nice little toy soldier? No, no, I know. An heir to his vast criminal empire. He finds a little boy clever enough to deduce Batman’s true identity and he thinks, ‘That’s the boy.’”  
  
He had meant it in cruel humor but the sharp bark of laughter that erupts from Timothy startles him.  
  
“Ra’s already has an heir all lined up, he doesn’t need me for that.”  
  
 _“You’re alive because Ra’s’ dear daughter is smitten with the Detective. Funny thing, sentiment.”_  
  
Jason feels his eyes widen, his stomach twist, and Timothy’s laughter takes on a sharp edge.  
  
“ _Now_  you’re getting it, Todd.” Timothy waves the syringe, tutting. Jason pats his coat pocket; he hadn’t felt Timothy sliding his hand into the pocket, the thief.  _Assassin_ , his mind supplies for him. “Syringes, really? As if petty tricks such as this would fool me.”  
  
“You –”   
  
Suddenly, the world is spinning and focusing on the bright white of Tim’s smile.   
  
“You drugged me, how –”  
  
Timothy winks and stows the syringe in his pocket and rocks on his heels.  
  
“A magician never reveals his secret. Have a bit of a nap, will you? It won’t do to have you follow me. It’s been fun, Todd.”  
  
In the few seconds before unconsciousness, Jason feels the soft brush of lips against his temple.  
  
“Until next time, Todd.”   
  
—  
  
Jason has, since his return to Gotham, left behind the Robin costume.   
  
Bruce says he looks like a street punk with a domino mask. Jason says that he’s not showing off his legs anymore and he refuses to wear spandex. It’s not spandex, Bruce says, but fire-resistant Nomex lined with Kevlar and if Dick can wear it so can Jason. Jason flips him off and patrols in his Kevlar enforced biker jacket and t-shirt anyways.   
  
He doesn’t have a new name to go with his new patrol outfit.   
  
There had been hurt in Bruce’s eyes when Jason had dropped the Robin costume into Alfred’s hands and told him “Burn it, donate it, shove it into some abandoned wardrobe in the manor, I don’t care. I’m not wearing it anymore. I’m not Robin, not anymore.”  
  
It isn’t what Bruce thinks –he’s not leaving, he doesn’t plan on leaving. Tim had been right and Batman needs someone by his side but not  _Robin_. Jason isn’t Robin, not anymore.  
  
He isn’t sure who he  _is_ , either.  
  
—  
  
“Nice threads,” Timothy comments, “It’s a refreshing change from the stereotypical leather-and-spandex superheroes are so fond of.”  
  
“Vigilante, Timothy, not superhero.”  
  
“Oh?” Timothy tilts his head quizzically, “I have always considered Batman and Robin as superheroes.”  
  
“Then what are you? A supervillain?”  
  
“An interested observer.”  
  
Timothy leans up, brushes his lips against Jason’s then, after a beat, presses more firmly. He licks his way into Jason’s mouth, curious and searching. “I’ve always been interested,” he whispers against Jason’s lips when their lips have become adequately bruised to his liking.   
  
With that, the dark haired boy licks Jason’s nose, slips out of his hold, lopes off to the edge of the rooftop and jumps. Jason doesn’t bother to look over the edge. He stares at the cloudy Gotham sky and breathes deeply and remembers.

White teeth and dark, glittering eyes. Ever since the Pit they have been a constant whisper in the back of his mind, a memory he can never forget.   
  
Jason doesn’t know who he is anymore, but he knows one thing.  
  
He has never stopped drowning.


End file.
